


Five Times Sam Thought He Understood Enochian and Two Times He Wished He had not.

by Acidspider



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-04
Updated: 2015-02-04
Packaged: 2018-03-10 07:09:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 6,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3281450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Acidspider/pseuds/Acidspider
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes Sam thinks he understands the foreign words when he hears Enochian. Sometimes he knows he has understood, and sometimes he wishes he had not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Anna Milton

**Author's Note:**

> First of all, this awesome art was done by Mein [Tumblr](http://sassypancakes.tumblr.com/) [Livejournal](http://kidezt.livejournal.com/12658.html) so please leave them some feedback.  
> Many many thanks to the Sam Winchester Big Bang for the patience.  
> Thank you [Hahanoiwont](hahanoiwont.tumblr.com) for betaing the first draft.  
> I’m also incredibly thankful and indebted to [HallsofStone2941](http://archiveofourown.org/users/HallsofStone2941/pseuds/HallsofStone2941) for encouraging this non-native English speaker/writer to put some of my thoughts into ink.

It is embarrassing, really, to realize how many times Sam has borne witness to his brother’s sexual pursuits.

When he was thirteen, just entering his teenage angst years, he remembers arriving at room twenty-four in the Super 8 Hotel in Indiana, where they were staying while his father hunted a child’s ghost in Noblesville. He came face to face with his brother reenacting the Kamasutra with Morgana, a fair-skinned barista with dyed black hair his brother had managed to get the attention of.

He opened the door without knocking because, hey, it was Dean and Sam! So why the hell should he have knocked? And all he saw was his brother’s back while he was having the time of his life.

A gasp escaped his lips and suddenly his brother turned around so fast one could have thought he was being caught while pickpocketing in a bus or something. Dean was so surprised and caught in the momentum that his supernatural awareness had brought through that he had landed hard on his ass, stark naked, and letting Sam have a pretty good look at the woman he was laying with.

-“Sam! Sam what the hell! You were supposed to be at the library, man!”

He had stood, stupefied, while watching everything and too embarrassed to move. His brother had been mortified, but that was only the first of too many times and close calls he would be witness to in his teenage and adult life, watching his brother go from conquest to conquest.

Still, given the apocalypse and everything, he watched his brother take a break in his pursuits those months after Sam murdered Lilith and unleashed Lucifer into the world. Sam’s shame, self-hatred and disgust had been, and still is, so massive that he cannot remember a time when he was content with his life, and now he cherishes those moments when his brother is whimsical and unpreoccupied by the weight of being a hero, a savior; of being Dean freaking Winchester. Those moments are now mildly funny to him now.

Still, he remembers the first time he heard the language of the holy, out of context and in ways so human that he blushes at the thought. 

That night is still embedded in his brain, the hopelessness and everything that was happening due to his ignorance, his willingness to believe in someone – something - so inherently evil. He still cannot believe he used to be so naïve, and the planning and strategizing with half-truths, making the best decisions he could make with the knowledge he had.

He had been feeling restless and had wanted to retrieve his knife from the armory inside the Impala for target practice to take his mind off things (say, for example, demon blood) when he heard sounds coming from inside Dean’s baby.

He had stood there, stupefied, like that first time many years prior, hearing his brother being intimate with Anna, the volume of her voice higher than Dean’s grunts. At that time he thought the foreign sounds leaving the former Angel’s mouth were broken moans.

In retrospect he realized, months later that was her, urging Dean, encouraging him; her attempt to reconcile with words the union between humanity and Divinity, her personal Heaven on earth as she experienced the passion and pleasure of the human flesh.

 

 


	2. Free to Be You and Me

The second time he heard it, it was through Lucifer’s lips. A promising, broken hum in his dreams. At first he thought he was dreaming some weird stuff… while listening to the static of the hotel’s TV in his half-awake half-asleep state.

Those first nights were really confusing, the plosive syllables and sibilant sounds made him think he was getting affected by his bookish nature. His love for literature had finally driven him insane, he had thought to himself jokingly.

He woke up after the first night dreaming about it and he remembers conveying his thoughts to his brother that morning with some humor in his voice.

“I think I’m dreaming in Parseltongue,” he had said to his brother, forgetting about their constant fighting temporarily and knowing his brother was also a bit of a geek, even though he hid it well. He had realized his faux pas, remembering how angry his brother seemed all the time, so he was much surprised when his brother parroted without missing a beat

“ _No, Harry. Even in the wizarding world hearing voices is not a good sign,”_

A laugh had bubbled in his chest with no warning, warm and light inside him and he watched his brother smile for the first time in months

Dean had followed the comment with, “I think I’m gonna grab us some coffee,” and that was the end of the conversation.

Night after night, for two weeks he dreamt the same sounds, always by a hidden voice that called out to him. After a while he started to just roll with the punches, and resigned himself to one more kind of sleep disorder in his life(ever since he could remember he had experienced onsets of insomnia, something his brother could not get over because, in his mind, there are some types of things that make life good and those are: pie, massaging beds and chairs, and sleeping as late as you can when you have the time).

When the inflection of the sounds started to make some sense to him he did not care, or get worried.

Sometimes he would dream wonderful things, like meeting his parents again: John would smile at him and tell him it was good to be back, that he was sorry about making him choose between family and himself. They would share a brief hug and his father would tell him stories of his marine days. They would be seated and share some cold ones with Dean, and sometimes even Bobby would appear, sharing something heavier: whiskey or some vodka. They would be laughing when he would see his mother in the threshold of Bobby’s living room. She would smile at him and call him Sammy in that soft kind voice that belied all her previous young life as a hunter. She would take a seat beside him, and stroke his hair, telling him he had grown so much, that she was proud of him and that he had done well, that she understood his choices and that everything would be fine.

They would stay like that, his family complete, happy to be whole again. It would seem like hours for Sam before he woke up, and he would always awaken with melancholy coloring his thoughts, but he would also distinctly remember that voice, thick and dark like tar, with no discernable speech, whispering oaths to him, a blackness searching for something and offering so much more

Night after night the words promised him things, but he could not shake the oily feeling behind each sound. By the time Jessica came around in his dreams, he had decided the recurrent patterns of speech of that slithering voice could not mean anything good.

Little did he know back then, how right Dean had been when he said hearing voices was not normal.


	3. 99 Problems

Sam has always loved knowledge. Ever since he was young, he has always liked the way every subject and every piece of information connects with different concepts, and how he can gain knowledge by searching and categorizing every bit of data, statistics, and lore you come across. He used to immensely enjoy diving into a new book, and experience opening it for the first time, inhaling the air and gathering the different smells that would come depending on the origin of the literature (hunters’ lore used to smell like whiskey and smoke, and everything else varied between dust bunnies and fresh glue). He remembers how, as a kid, he longed for an opportunity to learn a new language. His first crush in primary school had been from Latin-American background. They would always greet him hello in their native language and sometimes some of their expressions of anger, incredulity or protectiveness towards him would come in the form of Spanish cursing or terms of endearment.

As he went through life, he would encounter people from different ethnicities, nationalities, and so many languages, but hunting left no room for any personal pursuits. Still, by the time he left his father and Dean in that hotel in California and went to Stanford, he had decided to learn something just for himself. Two years went by and he acquired some basis in French, Spanish, and German. The company he kept right at the beginning of his term in Stanford was one of the most varied and intellectually challenging of all his life. He loved hanging out with people who would share their views and their culture, and he was left always wanting more. The romantic relationships were just as varied for him but not as frequent. Two partners came into his life, one from Slavic background and the other from Asian descent, but then he met Jess. Despite her conventional background his thirst for knowledge would not be assuaged. So, he would still hang out in coffee shops and hostels and any type of place where he could learn about history, and folklore, and more.

Then, enter new scene and his brother came back into his life. He had rejoiced because his brother was bits, little pieces, of everybody’s histories and he was everything in Sam’s life book. And then everything went straight to hell through yellow-eyed fire. The rest is ancient history.

The first time he realized he was hearing Enochian outside the chanting and the rituals, it is out of Cas’ mouth, inebriated, pliant and oh so very still after going – by his own words - “on a bender”. The words, hard and disjointed, got instilled onto his memory, because even though he hadn’t had a clue about the meaning behind Cas’ gibberish, he could easily gather the intent and the feelings behind them.

At first he thought the angel was speaking Russian, or some Slavic dialect he could not recognize, but then he realized that as an angel, the only way Cas could communicate with his kin was through the bastardized, humanized form of his native language. He thought about God often himself and he could imagine by Cas’ questioning tones that he was asking the almighty, omniscient, omnipotent father why he had forsaken his creations. He could easily hear between the hard Enochian sounds the angel’s questioning “Why father?” and “please help us” and “give me a sign please, please father.” 

Sam had always been a man of faith but he remembers how in those months he had begun to doubt everything in his very short (compared to an Angel’s) life. He could not imagine the thoughts forming in the Angel of Thursday’s head, but in his mind he had understood every single word Castiel had uttered that night, disappointed and abandoned.

 


	4. The Cage

There is not enough time, ink, space, or paper to even begin to describe it.

Just as he has always loved knowledge, he used to love writing.

He loved printing his thoughts and perceptions because he used to think expressing the galaxies inside every person’s brain through ink was beautiful, and that it was a way to connect the inner workings of human beings with the physical plane: the world, the outside universe.

When he was young he used to think if he learned every existent word in English he could describe the feelings he got when his brother dressed a wound he got hunting, his fingers delicate even though they were calloused hands; he thought he could maybe describe what he felt every time they finished a hunt, and while basking in the adrenaline high his brother would smile that accomplished smile, like he just finished a marathon, like he had finished climbing Mt. Everest, and Sam would almost feel content at the world. His mind would begin to imagine a future where he could and would help every person in need and his hard work would be sufficient. But then he would rest his eyes on his father and the magic of the moment would be lost, because… they were not doing the job because it was good.

He thought that if he learned every word in the English language, he could maybe find an adjective that could describe what he felt when his father mentioned his mother and his eyes would grow hard, his face frozen in a vengeful cold rictus. He had learned a lot of words, and he had tried to put every thought – rotating, like a planet, fixed, powerful and perilous like a star or stray like a meteor - into paper, but then he never could quite successfully describe what his mind came up with.

Then his life happened, then his death, and then a little more; a boxed space, a trapped existence: the cage. Words are insufficient, lacking but then that is not novelty: words have never been enough. Nothing will begin to describe, even though he will endeavor to do it.

A person’s palace, his body, can only cope with so many things: the human existence is limited, but the brain is like a computer. It can organize tons of information, but Sam had always thought humans were more limited by the biology of the human body, more than the workings of the brain. And he was right in a way. His body was taken out of the cage undamaged and his brain did its thing and made sure his physical body survived while being with Dean. His soul, his very raw essence, was the one affected by Lucifer.

The feelings, the sensations, every action his soul had experienced in the cage was like a drop in an ocean of acid, and so many things fell in the background when all he experienced was an extension of something so awful there is not a word in any language to describe it. Agony, torment, pain, suffering, death…not even close to what he felt when he was in there. His understanding of what was happening only felt like an awareness, but it had been many years before he had even begun to understand that Lucifer was talking while he tortured his soul, and it had been many more to even begin to understand what he was saying to him.

Angry, vengeful, aggrieved, furious, irate… all very soft words to explain what Lucifer expressed through his language of torture; what Lucifer thought he felt towards Sam while his voice and actions showed easily, smugly, in a million sounds, how easy it was to tear one’s soul apart; how easy it was to slow the decaying of one soul and reduce an existence to one huge howl of suffering, long, infinitely sustained and oh so horrifying to contemplate.

After the Cage, he stopped caring so much about the written words, about the inner universes and to him everything was… just… there. A jumble of every sound, every language, and every human thing, all unable to shed some understanding of what is like for a soul to be shred and put to pieces, grinded, torn and boiled; to die for an eternity and then come back.


	5. The man who knew too much

He was struggling… yes, a struggle. That is a good term for it.

He was struggling with identifying reality. He had had the wall for a while, and like an itch you cannot stop scratching, or like a sore inside your mouth that you cannot restrain yourself from swiping over and over with your tongue, he could not leave his body’s connection with his soul incomplete. He had suffered backlash when he tried to peek through the wall but he was slowly processing what his body was capable of digesting. Dean had been mad, sure, but as he believed before the cage, one cannot separate your physical and your metaphysical body for too long before something disastrous happens, and human brains are more capable of coping than everyone gives them credit for.

But when Cas destroyed Death’s wall, his brain had received an influx of information so high that his body could not seem to process it at normal speed. He can see the irony in his life. His brother loves Zep so much and all he can clearly hear - as his sanity bleeds through his mind and reality, and as nightmarish visions melt into a single still-frame shot - all he can hear is Robert Plant’s bluesy voice saying to him “When The Levee Breaks I'll have no place to stay” and especially, repeatedly “going down, going down down”. That is what he can discern in the cacophony of screams (some of his own; some he cannot make sense of), cackles, and wails. He can clearly identify Lucifer’s slimy voice as he uses that cursed language and what he told him all those years inside the prison in which he had chosen to sacrifice himself with to save humankind.

He cannot make sense of the words; his brain stuck with an overflow of information and his soul releasing everything it has gone through to put itself back in some order, but he can understand what the fallen angel’s message is. Thoughts and impressions come unbidden into his mind and he can now recollect everything and nothing at once. He can sense Michael’s essence as he struggles with his brother. He now remember fighting for coexistence with them, every entity inside the cage for themselves and running did not make any sense when powers beyond those of the humanity still existed inside that god forsaken place.

 


	6. The Born-Again Identity

Cas came back. He cannot clearly remember the time he spent inside the Sanitorium; everything that happened after the demons tied him up and shocked his brain dead. He just remembers awakening, his soul whole, Cas’ healing touch and grace having stripped his mind free of the insanity he had succumbed to after being at the tender mercies of the King of Hell’s minions...His brain was cleared of the feelings and the memory of the physical sensations (he calls it physical but it is more like a metaphysical, soul-like ripping hurtful sensation) of being prodded and poked, cold burned out of his skin, tortured - more like mind fucked – but the memories of the years he spent in the cage were there for him to peruse.

Cas removed all the hard edges of his memories of Hell. Now, everything appears like a pensieved memory (yes, he still remembers the Harry Potter books). Now it feels to him like watching a TV sitcom. He is apathetic but not unaware. In fact, he is incredibly conscious of every single moment of his life.

So, it comes as no surprise when he listens to Cas’ garbled sounds as he attempts to communicate with his angelic voice after he restored Sam, his grace so diminished he fails, and so his body procures the broken syllables of the human representation of Enochian in hard consonants and twisted monosyllabic sounds. Only this time, he can clearly understand every harsh sound, like an echo, an imprint of a time that now allows him to hear this irreplaceable being, this beautiful creation, his friend, at this point more like his brother saying, praying, begging:

“Please stop… I cannot bear this. Lucifer stop. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I can’t. I’ll tell father you were good, I’ll help you come back, please stop. Michael please, you said you loved me once, please, please help me. This hurts, It hurts, please, please, help me. Father, Father, help me please, I’m not alone, please, please, help me, someone… Somebody help me!”

His body is moving towards Cas with a mind of his own, his decision already made and he is using the language before he has time to process the fact that he can vocalize this the sounds created for the graceful, the real children of God.

“Cas he is not real, Lucifer is nothere,”

Cas lets out a broken whimper and looks at him with wide eyed stare as he says fearfully—

“It’s the abomination, the morning star’s vessel! Father help me. I know you’re there and he is not real. Am I real? Where am I? Oh father, he is here, I didn’t stop him, I’ve wronged you, don’t punish me, I’ve been good before. I’ve helped, haven’t I? Father…”

Sam’s heart squeezes tight and he feels his throat constrict and his nose feels congested, and he realizes that Cas’ words about him had hurt him because they are the truth. He feels the incredible urge to cry - because he loves his friend, and Cas had wronged him greatly but he wishes he had not saved Sam. He is not worthy of Cas’ salvation. He was just a broken child, a nobody without any purpose and now he is helpless as he watches Cas cowering in the corner of the room and repeating,

“Where am I, what am I? Am I real? Brother it hurts, stop hurting me! It hurts,”

“It’s Sam remember me? Winchester? Cas, you are not with him, you are with me! You are not alone, your father is nothere, but he hasn’t abandoned you, because I’m here, and I can hear you, and I can understand you! Can you talk to me? I’m real and he is not. You are not there, I promise you”

He tries to console Cas, tries to convince him that he is real, that he is not Hell’s spawn. That he is not the boy-king. The son of Azazel. That he is Sam, just Sam, his friend, but Cas’ body has regressed his memories to a time before he met Sam and everything about him only produces more fear out of Cas.

After a while all he can hear out of Cas’ mouth is, “it hurts, it hurts,” and every time he repeats those cursed words, Sam is left feeling so overwhelmed, he feels like putting his fist through any surface. And eventually he does, inside the bathroom, his knuckles left bleeding after hitting the bathroom walls and mirrors, while he pants and tries to regain some tranquility, some peace of mind so he can go back and try again for his friend.

He decides to stay for a while. He tries to connect Cas back to reality, getting inside Cas’ room and talking to him while they are alone, and for two days his brother obliges him, because Dean thinks he is guilty about Cas’ decision, and that his unforgiveness had spurred the angel’s decision to take Sam’s backlashed insanity unto himself, to redeem himself from his past mistakes. But then Dean grows tired of watching someone they both hold dear, even though they try to deny every conversation about their dynamics, their brotherhood, their family - and Cas is family - fall that hard, and Deans makes the decision to take off. They need to save the world one more time, after all.

Sam debates with himself whether there is something he can really do to help Cas, and he comes to the depressing realization that there is little he can do. He tells Dean they can leave the next day and starts preparing himself for the road, for the next terrible ordeal they will have to go through, one man / angelic being down because of him.

He manages to catch some time alone with the angel before they part, and he decides to tell Cas all the things he could not bring himself to say to him when he had been sane and conscious. Cas still watches him warily but his moans have abated a bit and he hears Sam distrustfully but with all of his possible attention.

He starts speaking again in Enochian, because even though he has neither negative feelings attached to the language, nor does he feel the particular impulse to use it, he knows the Angel’s predilection for speaking it at the moment, so Sam does the best he can do not to disturb the relative peace his friend has achieved. He begs Cas for forgiveness, he tells him how grateful he is to have met him(,) and tells him how he will pray to God and to Cas so they can be reunited in the future. Hopefully they will meet again soon, and everything will be restored inside Cas’ mind, but most of all, Sam longs for their relationship to be mended. For their family to be complete.

Cas’ eyes change a bit throughout his small speech and Sam makes the decision to reach out to the Angel some more. He shares all his fears, every thought he has grown used to only share with his brother, and then some thoughts he kept hidden from him, that related to what he feared would happen to Dean if the three of them were to be torn apart. He told Cas some of his secrets, his fears, knowing with a sense of dread and finality that he might not see a rational thought or word come out of his friend’s mouth ever again.

He wished had not understood his parting words, though.


	7. Chapter 7

He is prone to insomnia, he knows it.

When stress hits him he cannot easily disconnect the part of his brain that wants to know and solve everything as soon as possible and that fears the consequences if he is not swift enough or efficient enough in his hunts. He will work for hours without stop and then he will be left with tiredness he cannot sleep away.

He will always toss and turn in his bed for hours, and then after giving up on immediate sleep he will go and read for a bit, hoping fiction will soothe his brain enough so he can catch some z’s. If that does not work he will go for a walk. Sometimes, if he feels too amped up, he will go for a run. He will strain his body so hard that exhaustion will hit him and  - he is a little ashamed to admit it - after becoming physically ill, (like puking his lungs out) he will fall asleep on the pavement.

Sometimes that exhaustion will keep the nightmares of failure at bay, sometimes they will not. Even before the Cage he was an expert on those. If he had an essay to deliver, sometimes he would dream he had fallen asleep through the day and had failed to turn his work in to his professors. When his brother went to hell, he often dreamt about not being able to get him back, and of the suffering, the torture his brother was being subjected to.

Through the years he has grown accustomed to sleep deprivation. He will sleep when he can, with his moderately effective method of running his problems away.

There are times though, when even running until lactic acid is coming out from his nose does not even cut it. Even tired and exhausted, his brain (that he has teasingly mentally dubbed as Gimli, that tough, stubborn piece of machinery) will not shut down. Those times are the hardest to deal with because he is struggling with his body for control; his mind will not let him rest and his body will tell him in no uncertain terms that it is pissed. Case in point, when he first started dealing with Ruby. His mind could not deal with the lack of morality when dealing swift death to demons, and his brain would not shut down, filling itself with guilt, or the most rational part of his brain would weigh the pros and cons of going ahead and just begin a systematical wiping of the world of demons.

Today is one of those days, and he is roaming the halls of the Men of Letters bunker after following forty eight hours of no sleep, three freaking hours of light reading and a 20 mile run and still his brain will not let him rest.

 

He hears something, a hum in the hallway leading to Dean’s bedroom and his mind short-circuits for a moment, thinking maybe Dean has brought a conquest to the bunker, but then he realizes the sound is not coming from Dean’s but from the bedroom two doors next to it.

 

“Cas brought a conquest?” he murmurs dumbly, before realizing that it is Cas, who has been on earth less than a month and who has been crashing the bunker sporadically with no reason at all.

 

He goes into the bedroom, not thinking too much about it, his thinking process slow and he closes the door softly, lest he wake up Dean (who never has been a heavy sleeper).

As he approaches Cas, he realizes that he should not have entered the room ( _Privacy, Sam, have you heard of it? Personal space!_ An internal voice sounding like Dean supplies) before standing at the foot of the bed and watching Cas on the bed, sleeping, his limbs moving spastically and then, wonder of wonders his brain kickstarts again as he hears Cas’ voice supply some obvious evidence to his current state.

 

He is surprised again (though he should not be) that he can understand what Cas is saying: an endless speech of begging forgiveness, of self-deprecating discourse, Enochian granting Cas the ability to slash his existence in an easy speech of self-hatred. The sounds he utters for “I’m sorry” are easily mistaken for “I’ll never be redeemed”; the words for “I’m not worthy”, are interchangeable almost sound by sound for “I was never enough”.

As the Angel fights his way through a nightmare ( _is it a nightmare, night terror if he is remembering purgatory, Sam?_   the Dean-like voice supplies), the volume of his voice starts to pick up and Sam realizes he has to either: a) wake up Cas, or b) leave before Cas wakes up and has to experience the Angel’s embarrassment at being caught sleeping AND having a nightmare.

Before he can make up his mind though Dean is entering the room a blade ready in his right hand and Sam raises his hand in a gesture of surrender just in case his brother thinks he is some kind of intruder.

 

“What’s up Sam?” Dean is searching the room

 

“I dunno Dean, I found him like that”

 

“Woah, is he sleeping? What the hell man, Angels don’t sleep”

 

“I don’t know man, maybe he’s possessed?” Answered Sam half-jokingly, trying to play it safe.

 

He regretted making the decision of not telling his brother about his knowledge of the angel’s words two seconds later as he watched his brother narrow his eyes and say suspiciously

 

“Are we even sure this is Cas, Sam? We should’ve made sure he was!” Dean answered while readying the knife, his hands adopting a defensive posture

 

“Dean, do you know anybody besides us that is even aware there is a Men of Letter’s bunker let alone where it is?” Dean watches sam for few seconds and then turns his stare at Cas again

“No”

 

“Well then, just wake him up or something, I’m sure the sleeping thing is just temporary”

 

As Dean approaches Cas, Sam slowly makes his way to the door. He does not need to be there, to know what are the first words Cas is going to say to Dean.

 

_Everything’s fine. I’m alright. Nothing is wrong._

 

For Team Free Will, it is not just a river in Egypt. Denial, that is.

 


	8. Chapter 8

 

 

He hears him again two nights after that.

Dean told him Cas had said that past night something about a new tablet he found at the bottom of the Mariana’s Trench and the thing had started draining him of his energy, getting worse the longer he stayed with it. According to Cas he had come to the bunker so he could get it hidden someplace safe.

He meets Dean at the door of Cas’ bedroom and they both get inside this time with barely an ounce of hesitation. Sam stares at Cas while Dean just rounds up his bed searching for potential dangers (even though they are at the bunker, Dean’s hyper awareness will not let him go into a room without scouting for potential hazards)

The words that come out of Cas’ mouth tell the same story; the story of regret from someone who believes they failed their purpose a long time past. “I am sorry Dean, I was wrong but I wanted to help. We divine beings, we are so isolated. I was so alone, I didn’t understand humanity. But you and Sam saved me. You made me believe in what my father was trying to show us for centuries. I know I failed. I’m sorry I failed.”

Dean sits beside Cas and he looks both resigned but preoccupied as he wonders quietly

“What is he saying”. The eldest Winchester swipes a hand through his face as he watches Sam before he asks “Should we try and wake him up again?”

Sam keeps listening to Cas’ mumbles and tiredly replies to Dean

“Just tell him that you forgive him and that he’s safe Dean.”

“What do you mean Sam?”

“Just tell him what I told you”

Dean watches Sam suspiciously as he repeats the words softly to Cas’ ears and the angel’s murmurs of distress are somewhat abated.

Sam’s exhausted…he’s tired of hiding what he knows, what he is to his brother, the weight of every decision he has made in his life feels so heavy against his ribcage. The pressure of the knowledge he has and the sudden realization of what peace of mind he can bring with his memories uncoil something in him and he gives into the impulse of helping…helping his family just like they always have. He watches Dean, feels his brother anxiety as he watches their friend struggle with his own form of humanity, faced with centuries of memories and feelings that as a full-fledged angel he got the luxury to bury.

Sam finds himself repeating Cas’ words to Dean, softly but fast paced, as if he stops he will lose the courage and will not repeat what their friend is trying to communicate.

“I always helped my family, what Father told me to protect, but then there was Sam and Dean. I wanted to help you. I have always existed to help my family” Cas suddenly flinches and says “Dean Look out, duck! There is one of them following us”

Dean looks at Sam as if he has lost his mind again so Sam clears his throat and clarifies:

“He is trapped in purgatory again, he feels someone is following you and he wants to save you” 

Dean watches Cas then his attention switches to Sam and something finally dawns on the eldest of the Winchester’s.

“That’s Enochian then?” Dean asks with hooded eyes, his hands fluttering restlessly like senseless birds before settling on Cas’ hand that is placed just above his stomach.

Cas return to consciousness is slow and as he opens his eyes he stares at the brothers on each side of the bed. He closes his eyes embarrassed and that’s when Sam starts speaking. His mind just unloads and he’s saying what he has always wanted to his family. His right hand unconsciously moves towards Dean and Cas joined ones and their hands all gather together

His voice slips from English to Enochian repeating same words to Dean and Cas, and he feels like it is not enough. Like his feelings will not get across, like his gratitude and his love for his family will not be conveyed through broken language.

He feels tired, yet fortified and unbeatable by the ones that define him. Minutes trickle by and he repeats the endless litany of words

“Thank you for keeping my soul, for saving my humanity, I love you guys, you make life worth living, you make my actions mean something to others, you guys purify me, you don't know how many lives you have saved, how many people you have changed” His words start to fail him, his voice a little wrecked but then it isn’t just him repeating and expressing what goes in his mind.

Cas is also communicating, in his own language and the same sounds that conveyed his perceived lack of worth now tell a different story.

Dean catches Sam’s eyes and he hears Dean’s wavering voice asking

“What is he saying Sam?”

Sam is relieved, because he understands. He replies to his brother

 **“** He’s saying we are **_strong_ , **but in Enochian that also means **_whole_ ”**

 


End file.
